CHICAGO (WLS) — A 30-year-old man has been charged with the murder of a Harvey woman who was found dead in a Midlothian forest preserve in 2020.

Vanessa Ceja Ramirez disappeared while taking a walk in the Midlothian Meadows Forest Preserve on Nov. 2, 2020. Her body was found partially burned in the preserve two days later. An autopsy determined she had been strangled.

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Tuesday, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office announced Dakota Petrey has been charged with first degree murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault in Ceja Ramirez’s death.

The sheriff’s office said Petrey lived in Oak Forest at the time of Ceja Ramirez’s death. Police said their investigation connected DNA from Petrey with DNA recovered from Ceja Ramirez and the crime scene, but that there is no indication the two knew each other.

Petrey was taken into custody Saturday after he was released from Fulton County Jail in Lewistown, Ill., where he had been in custody since October 2024 on unrelated charges. He appeared in court Sunday and was ordered detained pending trial.

On the day she disappeared, Ceja Ramirez had been walking with her mother in the Midlothian Meadows forest preserve, but decided to separate and said she’d meet her later at the car. The 22-year-old teaching aide never made it.

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“This heinous crime is every parent’s worst nightmare,” Sheriff Tom Dart said. “It took years of tireless work by our police detectives to investigate this case, but we never gave up on finding Vanessa’s killer and seeking justice for her and her family.”